1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to cable deployment between bodies that are separated at high acceleration.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore, wire-guided missiles have been equipped with wire magazines wherein the wire is unwound from a spool and then passed through a ring secured in a funnel with a long neck. The ring purportedly collects insulation coating particles scraped from the wire and prevents them from interfering with movement of the wire. Such a wire magazine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,286,947, Nov. 22, 1966.
In the field of wire-guided rockets, it is also known to use a small auxiliary wire coil in addition to a main coil. The two coils are disposed so that the auxiliary coil is unwound before the main coil. In the wire dispenser of U.S. Pat. No. 3,266,423, Aug. 16, 1966, the auxiliary coil is pancake shaped and the main coil is cylindrical.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,619, Oct. 19, 1971, discloses a payout coil apparatus for a wire-guided torpedo. The coil is not supported by a mandrel or spool. The free-standing coil is housed in a simple container which has a conical casing surrounding the wire exit orifice. The following U.S. patents also show devices wherein a wire or thread is removed from a supply spool and pulled through a hopper or a cone: U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,170,194; 2,858,088; 3,389,875; and 4,135,679.
Lightning is a hazard to tall rockets during fueling and during ascent from the launch pad through storm clouds. Investigators explored a wire deployment process for triggering lightning prior to a hazardous rocket activity and wrote about the effort in Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 9, No. 9, Sept. 1972, pp. 631-632. Attempts were made to deploy a single wire from a rocket fired (with 70 g acceleration) into a storm cloud. Irrespective of whether the wire end was anchored to the ground site or not, only 15-60 m of wire was deployed before the wire was permanently deformed into a sequence of curls and loops that tightened into kinks causing the wire to break.
There has developed a need for a cable deployment system that will safely pay out cable under high acceleration, high velocity conditions. More particularly, it is desired to provide a deployment system whereby a ballistic forebody can be separated from an afterbody at a very high acceleration and maintain reliable electrical communication between the bodies via a multiple-conductor cable that is deployed from the forebody.